All of Elon Musk’s companies have their headquarters in California. But as time passes, he gets more and more critical of the state and the conditions that it offers him to conduct his businesses.
During an All-In Conference in Miami, the billionaire and Tesla and SpaceX owner reveals this to the broad public with no hair on his tongue. He speaks exactly what he thinks and is not afraid to criticize everyone that he doesn’t like or who doesn’t do his job properly.
Three Main Things Are Ruining California – See What They Are According To Elon Musk
The Tesla CEO starts off with his biggest issue with California. Of course, the taxes and overregulation. “California used to be the land of opportunity. However, it’s turned into the land of taxes, overregulation, and litigation and this is not a good situation.” – Musk states.
Musk is still investing in his businesses on a great scale. He builds plants and factories all over the world but still prefers domestic production if possible. And for plants in the USA, you can see that he avoids California. Firstly, he built the infamous Giga factory in Nevada, due to the tax benefits that they offered. Then he starts looking for alternatives all around the world. He builds the Tesla factory in Shanghai and another one near Berlin.
Yet, Musk is still willing to invest in the USA, so he finally built a new US factory in Texas. The land with the lowest taxes, and best opportunities business-wise. The speed with which a factory could be built from scratch and start producing is one of the pros of building a factory in Texas. Musk built a Giga factory near Austin in just a year and a half. And its size of it is three times the size of the Pentagon. So imagine building it, equipping it, and starting production in only a year and a half. That is amazingly fast.
“If you had a gun to California Governor Gavin Newsom’s head and said ‘we need to start building this factory right now,’ he couldn’t do it. There are so many regulatory agencies and so many litigators in California. They want to stop you from doing anything. Even if you’re the governor of the state, you cannot do it.” – Musk criticizes California’s regulations.
According to Musk, this situation is caused due to the lack of opposition in the state. There is no one there to ask for changes, so the state stays in the same position it was 10 or 20 years ago.
“Ultimately the people of California have to get fed up and demand change. There’s got to be an above 0% chance of the Republicans winning in California.” – the billionaire suggests.
And maybe he is right. In order for one environment to evolve you need separate opinions. Separate opinions fuel competition and competition is good for advancement.